It says we're going live in 4 minutes. I think it worked. Okay. Yay. Good morning, everyone. Okay. Uh Josephine, do you have co-host? Just in case. Uh Anthony, you have co-host, too.
Please help me admit everyone. Okay. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for being here. the uh May 8th uh CPAC meeting. As always, it's always a pleasure to be here representing all of
you and we are Please mute if you're not speaking. We're calling this meeting to order at 9:30 a.m. As you can see on the screen, we have your executive board members today and uh
present on a roll call. I'm not sure if um Randy, you are you are you able to do roll call? Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm just like in a little bit of pain, but I I'll I'll get through it. Thank you.
District, just the ones that are here. Sorry. Okay. Um I Everybody's not renamed yet, so I'm just going to just call them all out. Um, district one, district two here,
district three here, district four, district five, district 6. Good morning, president. Good morning. District 7. District 8. District
9. District 10. 11. 12. Here. 12. Yes. Here. That's Christie. No. Kenya Barney. Okay. 13.
14 15 district 15 presents Liz Raen Good morning Liz 16 17 18 19 District 19 President Shaima Sely
Good morning Shakima 20 present 21 present 22 Good morning I'm here good morning Michelle 23
24 25 26 Good Morning district 26 present. Good morning Adriana. Morning 27 28 Good morning. Good morning Jazelle.
29 30 31 32 District 75 Brooklyn High School. I am here. Bronx, Manhattan, fresh hands, Rosa. You're here.
Um, Queens here. Good morning. Good morning, Chanette. I might get kicked off. I'm trying to relog back in. Sorry. No problem. It's dumping me. Hold on. Staten Island. Okay. And I think I saw um D9
come in. Uh, no. District seven. Seven. Okay. Okay. Uh, anyone I missed? Okay, I'll turn the floor back over to you, chair. Thank you so much, Randy. Just in case,
um, we'll put the attendance on the chat. And um if you're here from district 1 4 5 10 14 16 17 18 22 23 24 25 27 29 30 31
32 District 75 Bronx and Satin Island, please let us know. Um I am unable to see everyone right now because I'm sharing my screen but
um it's very important that you represent and uh are and are here present engaging with us and take all this information back to your president's councils and your districts. Um, as you may know, the executive
board, uh, we reserve the right to contact the district's, uh, presidents, including the boros. [Music] Um, if you have been enacted for the past three consecutive CPAC general meetings, just wanted to let everyone
know of that. And with that, we are having today the agenda for today. Uh, we already did roll call. We are going to do CPAC business in a minute and we are having a district borrow update. So everyone please be
ready to share any update um from your district, any event or anything that is happening in your district that we can advocate. Also around 9:50 we are having um intentional healing healing by Andrea
Manuso who is the founder. And then around 10:30 a.m. we are going to have a presentation on school water quality um by the office of energy and sustainability um an overview of uh New
York City public school solar programs. Um we are having also face of course and then we're going to have our chancellor and then um family leadership coordinator uh from new vision Abdullah Balde and then we are going to have
civic engagement around 11:55 uh and then we are going to table the April minutes because we did not receive it and hopefully we'll have an adjournment around 12 10. Okay. Does anyone have any questions
or any opposition with regards to the agenda? Please let us know to raise your hand. Okay, we're moving on. First, um, and everyone of the executive board can chip in at any time. We want to say thank you so much, uh,
for including us. I know. Um I was I was very excited just to be in community with all the FLC's yesterday. It was it brought um warm to my heart to see everyone and
especially in person because everything that we do at Zoom and everyone was like, "Oh my god, Rosa, you're taller than I thought." You know, so it was it was really nice. It was really nice. Um, so I I wanted to say thank you, you
know, like we felt welcome. I can only speak for myself, but please, anyone from the executive board unmute and say something, please, if you want to chime in, I'm sorry, sorry, the executive board.
Um, I just want to say this is um something that we had spoken about at the last meeting saying that change was coming. So um CPAC's executive board had requested to try to um bring together
and collaborate with um president's council president exe president's council executive boards with their FLC's to make us um to help us work together and have a a better relationship so that we can help our PAS
and PTAs work with their parent coordinators. So yesterday was the first of hopefully many and we're just trying to get that collaboration together and then we're going to include all president's councils so we can build that relationship a trusting lasting
relationship with one another. So we're looking forward to it and it was great and we had great feedback. So we appreciate all the FLC's that were there. We appreciate um Chancellor Az Ramos for um for for listening to the
parent leader. She listened. She really does hear us. And to um Deputy Chancellor uh Christina Melendez, um Danica Rux. It was a DSL face CPAC FLC collaborative. Um always our support
from Anthony Aguular who's our CPAC liaison. So, I don't want to talk too much, but it was great and we can talk about it another time um like more in depth if you guys like. Absolutely. Does anyone else from the executive board let's see Pat would like
to say something? If not, we're going to move on. Okay. [Music] second. And with that, we are going to go to our um our share. One second. There we go. I'm able to see
everyone now. Thank you. So, we are going to do any um district updates. Does anyone want to share what is going on in your district? How can we best support you? How can we continue the
work together? Just like Brandy said, um, please raise your hand and we are going to listen and take notes. There we go. Hi, good morning. Um, I'm actually in transit, so I don't have my camera, so I
apologize for that. Uh but at in district 8, we're actually doing a parents choice awards. So this will be our second year of a parents choice awards where we get to choose the most impact impactful principal, most impactful teacher, most impactful parent
coordinator, and the most impactful school community member. That covers everyone else. Uh last year we had nominations for secretaries, for our SSA agents, APS, and a little bit of everything. So, our uh nomination period
is about to open at the end of this week and we're really excited to honor everyone and also while they're voting for the parents choice award, we're definitely going to make sure that we're letting everybody know to vote for their
CEC representatives as well. So, we're excited to push all of the voting and to recognize the great work. Obviously, uh this is teachers appreciation week. So, uh, it's a great way to launch out our, uh, initiative at district 8 for
appreciating our teachers. Thank you. Thank you. Does anyone else want to share what is going on in your district? Please raise your hand. Oh, sorry. I didn't raise my hand. Go ahead, Jessa.
Hi. Um, so in D28 on May 30th, there's going to be a Queen's Youth Health Summit. Um, and also on May 30th, we're going to have a end of year celebration at PS
349. Um, and I'll add the link um here. On May 31st, there's going to be an autism and de developmental disabilities walk and resource fair as well. Awesome. Awesome. That's great. Uh,
District 19. That's good. Good a good morning everyone. So, May 16th, the District 19 will be having a HTS health and wealth thing. On um May 28th edition, we'll be
having a family um parent awards. Okay, thank you Mr. family awards um um brunch for certain families that they awarding and I think that's
it. Oh, and then we have teacher appreciation week. Um, all the schools been showing the teachers appreciation this week. And then last week we had principal appreciation and the district gave out nice gifts to the to our principles. Some awesome. Yes, Rodelle.
Um, on for district 7 on May 16, in collaboration with the community education council, we are hosting a legislative brunch where we bring all our local leaders to come in and um give the
um parents and the district the opportunity to address all concerns regarding our school community. um answer questions regarding budget and resources. And so we're still in the final stage of getting, you know, local leaders
and politicians to attend our legislative brunch. So that way, you know, they hear our parents' voices and their concerns and address them and answer any hard-hitting questions that we will have for them because we care
about our community and we want them to be held accountable for what's being done and what not being done. Thank you. Love it. Thank you so much, Rudell. Uh Caroline. Yes. Good morning. Um, I just wanted to
share a couple of things happening in District 6. Uh, very busy month for all, I'm sure. Uh, graduation's upon us, so I know everybody's very, very busy. Um, but just a couple of things and I'll pop some things if I can in the chat. I'm not sure if I I'm allowed to attach flyers, but um, we have our uh,
wonderful District 6 um, talent show, so to speak, for students for all our wonderful schools. um they're getting all together and creating different performances including actual artwork that we'll have displayed amongst um the wonderful theater of United College on
175th and Broadway. All are welcome to come and see the wonderful wonderful talent that our students have. Um the actual um theme of the show is called one world many voices and so we had a poster contest for our flyer. We had a student
that won, but we had five runner-ups that we are going to take their actual artwork and post it on our t-shirts. So, that's going to be really nice. Um, and then one more thing that I'd like to add is we're actually hosting on the CC side of uh the the district 6 group. Um,
they're hosting a parent spa, pretty much like a parent um university, so to speak. Uh it's happening on May 24th from 9:30 to 12:30 and it's to pretty much give our parents information on all things president council PTAs in general
CC's and ways that they can connect with the community in their school's community. So we're looking forward to all of these wonderful events and just very proud of every single parent leader in this space right now because we're really doing the hard work of pushing our schools forward and we're doing it
on the balance of being parents. So kudos to all and thank you so much for the time. Absolutely. Yay. Um Adriana. Um at district 26, President's Council like to share that on uh May 17th, we're
having our first districtwide clothing drive to help fund raise for President's Council. And it's going to we're going to send it out to all the schools. And hopefully you can raise some funds for President's Council. Which leads me to our annual legislative breakfast which
will be on May 23rd which is well attended and we will be for the first time celebrating our legacy PTA presidents have been doing this for uh a number of terms and our community will be coming together electeds NYPD all our
schools are well attended uh principles APs parent coordinators and our PTAs to really celebrate what our parent leaders have been doing uh pretty much on their own time. So, those are two events we have going on, President's Council. Thank you. Awesome. Awesome. Does anyone
else wants to go before I go? Yes, Kenya. Welcome. Well, I'm new here. So, so far we have um a sign coming up May 28th and um a graduation for the kindergartens June 23rd so far. So,
thank you for sharing. That's all I have right now. Thank you. Thank you and welcome. Thank you, Priscilla. Sorry guys, I'm running around for teachers appreciation. I'm excited. Um,
so District 29 has an oath installation for our PTAs. We have like this really big banquet. Um, we've been fundraising heavily for to celebrate our newly installed PTA boards. We're looking good for getting everyone's elections done.
So that for June we'll be fully loaded. So that's going to be at PS15. Really excited about that. We also have a parent popup event where parents are going to be showcasing their businesses. So we already have 40 tables sold. So we have a lot of talented business owners
in District 29 and that's at Collaborative Arts Middle School. So, we're really trying to elevate the vibe over here in Queens because we are the traffic land with the Van Wick. And that's it. Happy Teachers Appreciation Week, everyone. I know you guys are doing amazing things at your
school. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much, Priscilla. Anyone else? Okay. So for me, Mahadan high schools uh we have been very active uh training um president's council we've
been um uh doing presentations and even attending PAPA meetings to support with their elections just being a servant obviously and um I know we table also at the May 3rd event which is a
collaboration in Washington Heights for the past three years now We uh provided um books, we provided arts uh activities. I will share some of the pictures um and also just interacting
with with everyone that showed up because still there is a a lack of sharing the knowledge like they don't know some of the parents don't know you know like what is Mahatan High School's president's council you know what I mean and we support all the districts from one to six so there's a lot of
information that still parents do not know and we're trying to provide um a lot of support and even our email address and our phone number uh just so everyone can know and follow up and just be on the lookout.
Um and for district 4, I know the representative is not here, but because I am also in district 4, I know we've been uh engaging and doing a lot of events when it comes to teachers appreciation. So, I am excited. I've been to so many already and I'm just I
just love it. I just love being um in community. Okay, we are Yes. Dist. Good morning. Um I was to say that about two months ago, we did our third annual um parent leadership training and we offer every parent leader um
breakfast, but we also learn from parents. So we had small breakout rooms where parents would teach us how they did fundraising or a Canva 101. We had amazing um um um breakfast for all parent
leaders and we invited the whole entire executive board and also in district 14 um the president's council has worked with the district office to provide training for everybody as well. We do fundraising training. We do um treasurer
training because I think that's one of the hardest um jobs in every PTA is being a treasurer. So we have taught people how to use Excel sheets, how to monitor the things. So that's being done in district 14. Thank you. Thank you so much. We are now
moving on with the agenda. [Music] And Andrea, if you're here, oh, I see you. Good morning. Good morning. Thank you, Andrea. The floor is all yours.
Thank you for being here. and take us away. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me, Rose. I appreciate it. Um, hi everybody. My name is Andrea Manuso. I am the founder of Intentional Healing and Wellness. I'm really grateful to be
here and I want to begin by saying thank you for the work that you do. I am a former school psychologist of 14 years. And so I'm very familiar with what happens on the school level and all the work that goes into what you all are
doing. And so I I would be remiss if I did not begin by thanking you and uh letting you know that sometimes the work feels as if no one notices. Um but it's it's really appreciated and the system can't run without you. So that's first
and foremost. I'm curious and I did prepare a couple of slides just for the visual learners who like to sort of look at something and I'll share that in a moment. But I'm curious if in in the chat if on a 1 to 10 you can let me know how stressed are you right now on a 1 to
10 and it doesn't have to be in this particular moment but I would say at this particular time. All right. So we have a nine in the chat. 6 8 6 9 Yes. Right. Seven. There's a
lot. Josephine, we have a 12. Yes, there is a lot. 10 7. There's a lot happening, you know, and my business is really designed to support this particular piece. Um, and if I always say that if
my workshops, if we begin workshops and you are at a 12 and I'm able to get you down to a nine, then the workshop was successful. You know, if you're at a six, I'm able to support you in bringing it down to a three and the work is successful. Um, what about overwhelm? On
a 1 to 10, how overwhelmed would you say that you are? Do you have a lot of work? Do you have a lot to keep up with? Where are you at with the overwhelm? Taking care of family, children, managing, juggling, scheduling the Zoom meetings, showing up, remembering all the tasks, right?
There's a lot that you are doing. Yeah. 10 10 10:15. Exactly. There's a lot happening. Um, and what about exhaustion 1 to 10? We're almost at the finish line, right? May 8th, few more weeks. This is when it
gets the hardest. We have 100 8 n exactly. There's a lot going on. So, um, do we need to pay for parent to workshops for self-care? Yeah. So, there's a there's a lot that's happening and I'm going to share my screen. My work really looks to support with all of
these different things and then some. So, I'm just going to share really quick. Um, okay. Can you all see my screen? Okay, perfect. Okay. So, I am a New York City vendor and um certified
MWBE. I like to share that because sometimes doing business is a bit easier when that's the case. And I want to just, you know, talk to you a few minutes about my training and who I am and why I started this business. So, I was a school psychologist in district
21. So, if district 21 is in the building, I just want to send you some extra love. Um, I was a school psychologist in district 21 for 14 years. And the career changed a lot when I was going through my my years. And so by time I was leaving the system, which
was in 2021 is when I resigned. I was recognizing that there was tons of paperwork, but there wasn't as much time for me to support the students, the parents, and the staff. And that's what I like to do most. So, um, my background is in therapeutic intervention. I'm a
mental health counselor, an educational consultant, and I felt in 2021, I would say right after the, you know, main part of the pandemic that in order to be effective with supporting students, parents, and staff, I needed to leave the system. And so, it was a huge leap
of faith. I left the system and started intentional healing and wellness. And now I am serving the entire city, all the different districts um available to provide services. And so I'm happy to be here with you to talk to you a bit about what I can do for parents specifically.
So our mission with intentional healing and wellness is to elevate the culture and performance of the entire school community by empowering students, parents, and staff. And what I know from my time in the system and my time out of the system is that students, families,
educators, they all want to feel safe, seen, heard, and valued. And so my work really sets out to do just that. And during these challenging times, working together with parents to strengthen stress management skills, mental health
skills, which we've come a far way with mental health, but we still have a long way to go. There's still a huge stigma around service. And so I look to really normalize conversations around mental health and support. And um I would say make it cool instead of making it like
shameful and embarrassing. You know, I really do a lot of work around that. Um and I use myself as an example. I'm someone who's no stranger to struggling with mental health. I had, you know, history of panic and anxiety and depression and I've been able to learn strategies and tools to change my life
and that's why I want to support others in changing theirs. Um and also the leadership development piece. Leadership skills are essential for success and I want to be able to empower parents to tap into these skills so that they are able to thrive in their own lives,
support their children to thrive. Um, and I always believe that when we are able to thrive, we then create a ripple effect and other people can as well. So what I'm noticing now over the past I would say five years or so is these are
some of the silent battles that parents are fighting. So chronic stress and mental health challenges. So we saw in the chat we have a we have 12 we have 100 on some of the scores right there's a lot happening. So parents are navigating overwhelming levels of stress
right now. There's burnout which is rampant. there's emotional fatigue and this is all while trying to support their family, children, you know, with their education and navigate their personal life. So, it's a lot. And the
second thing that I noticed tremendously that comes up in a lot of the trainings that I do is parents are completely overwhelmed with supporting children who have diverse learning and emotional needs. So this is a big piece because often times when let's say special
education is on deck. It's a whole another level of support that parents need to learn and navigate the system and be able to you know advocate for themselves for their child become partners with the school. I know from my
years of experience that often times parents feel on the outside of of the the educational system. And so being able to feel as though there's a collaborative partnership, a creative partnership I would say with schools um
particularly with students who are at risk and navigating the challenges academically and all of the things. And then the third thing it is pretty much what I just tapped into is the disconnection between home and school. parents want to be engaged as partners,
but a lot of times, you know, sometimes, myself included, when I see some of the second grade curriculum, I don't know how to do some of the things that they're teaching, you know, because it's being taught in different ways. So there's often a disconnect from um parents and schools in the sense that it
can be difficult to find a way to come together when learning styles are different or there's language barriers or there's uh needs that require services. And so my work really looks to provide solution to these things. And so
the way in which I do that okay the way in which I do that is through raising awareness. So a lot of the topics require an awareness and some of my services seek to do that level of support and then also provide
empowerment and education and provide tools and support. So my work is very practical. I like to engage parents because I remember being in the system and thinking that if I had to sit through one more presentation, I
wouldn't be able to do it. So, my workshops are very interactive and they're really hearing from parents and you know in hearing from well how what levels of stress are you experiencing? Where is it showing up for you? Let's identify the sources because we can't do
anything about it until we know what's going on. And that's how we workshop all of the topics together which I have found to be very very successful. So the different services that I offer right now to parents um I offer 60-minute virtual sessions. I find that anything
beyond a 60 minute session is you know we we lose people. Um, I offer 60 minute and 90 minute in-person workshops, which I would say is the most popular, this offer, because people are craving connection, want to be in community,
want to be together, and so I personally love this one most, and I find that when I get the feedback, everybody's enjoying this. And then retreats, which could be up to 3 hours. And this is more of like a little, you know, uh I I call it like a
little spa stationation type of day where I'm do a mix of different things, have different people support me to provide what would be like a restorative experience for parents. So like mind, body, soul type of type of event. And some popular topics um
managing stress as a parent, supporting your child's mental health, balancing school and life, emotional strength, building emotional strength in your child. Um and remember taking care of self. A lot of these topics when it comes to supporting the children, it
requires that parents learn to do it first. And so there's this huge empowerment piece that I do with my work before I even look to focus on the child. It's really focusing on the parent um parenting through crisis, which I think we could all agree we've been in the in the throws of it, you
know, for quite some time. Working together with teachers, what that could look like, preventing burnout as a parent or burnout recovery, right? Because based on the numbers that I saw in the chat, it's thriving right now.
Um raising have somebody in the waiting room. Let me let them in. Okay. raising respectful kids, supporting special needs or at risk kids, effective communication with your child. Now, a lot of these workshops are again
interactive strategy and toolbased hearing from parents. I also use the arts and I use music oftent times. So, I do heal and paint sessions. We do music sessions um which is more of like I would say a music therapy type of experience. So, it's creative, it's fun,
it's engaging, people take to it very well. Um, I'm going to open up for questions in a minute, but I do want to share this particular screen. This is my contact information. Um, I could you could reach me by phone or by email. And
if you scan this code that's on here right now, it will prompt you to send me an email, which the bulk of it's already filled out. You just have to include your name and your phone number. Um, it basically indicates already that you are
interested in learning more. What I would do at this point, if you scan the code and send me that message, I will set up a call with you. We could set up a half hour call. I could how I could be of support to you first and foremost and then if there's any additional
information you're interested in for, you know, bringing this work to your districts. So, I'm going to stop the share in a moment. I just want to make sure that everybody gets this. I would say take advantage of this scan because if nothing else, you'll be supported for a half hour. And I think that that's
really important given the work that you're doing. Um, I will send this to Rosa so that you have it, you know, in case anybody circles back or missed today's meeting and you want to get this out to them. But I just want to open up for questions. Um, what size are the
workshop groups generally? So with the parents it varies but that's based on who shows up. You know I've had school I've had workshops where I led and there was five people and I've led workshops where there was 45 people. So it depends
all of the interactive sessions that I do if it's traditional workshop style where I'm engaging and hearing from people there's no limit. So it can be however many. When there's like the arts and it's more of a creative project and you know it requires materials, I
usually try to cap it at 40 just because then I know between setup and getting involved in that way it gets a little bit more complicated. Um and then there was the comment of breaking general generational cycles and that was connected. Yeah, this is this
is big work that's happening. Um, we have Amanda, your hand is up. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Andrea. Um, just in case, we do have five more minutes for questions uh and answers and then uh we'll move on
with the agenda, but I do appreciate it. Please do send me those those slides. And Amanda, where did you go? I'm here. Oh, there we go. Go ahead. Go ahead. Um, I just I was the size the workshop question, too. I was just curious. I know you said you don't generally love
doing presentations, but will you present to a whole PA or PTA and do you think that's useful? Yeah, I absolutely do. Um, and thanks for that question because that's an important thing to um clarify. I absolutely do
presentations. I just find that when it comes to parent meetings, traditionally they don't like to have a presentation style. they more enjoy the interactive workshop style. With that being said, there's absolutely times in which I present and it's needed because of the
material that's being given or the tools that require, you know, people taking screenshots and stuff. And so, yeah, it can absolutely be pres, you know, a presentation for uh the PTA. Um, and I've done that before. So, we can absolutely talk. I would say scan that.
you know, we can talk more about what you're thinking specifically. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Just in case whoever is on the go, you don't have to worry because I will send her information to all the members. So,
if you didn't get it, if you didn't scan the cure, it's okay. We got you. CPAC got you. Does anyone else have any questions for Andrea? Don't be shy. Don't be shy, please. This is a safe space. We're here working
together, advocating for our parents. That's what we make it happen every single month. Go ahead, Kenya. Um, the retreat is, you said two hours or eight, I think. Uh, it's usually up to three hours. Yeah, it could be two, it could be three. And then it's the segments are
divided and broken down into different sections so that we touch on a few different and I usually this is based on what I do who I collaborate with to hear what would they like to incorporate you know is is there a need for movement is there a need for you know like
meditation type things and so it's all customuilt based on the people that I'm servicing and so if that's something that is of interest we can talk to make sure that we hit the need. Thank you. You're welcome. Um the price ranges
vary. Uh it depends on I would say like the low, you know, the lowest one for is for virtual for the hour. Um but there's all different packages. I would say that the lowest service that I offer is at begins around the $500 price point and
then it goes it goes up, you know. So it's it is very custom, you know. Um, so that's where I would definitely want to have a conversation to hear what is it for you to make sure that I'm I'm meeting your needs and then letting you know that. So we can we can absolutely go through all of that. And Rosa, that
would be great if you could send out the information and then we'll, you know, talk more. But I just want to really say thank you to everybody to um I want to encourage you to please take care of you. I know that lots of people rely on you that you pour out in lots of
different ways. you being on this committee is evidence and I just want to really remind you that it's hard to pour from the empty cup, right? So whether it be 10 minutes if you start with or a half hour if you're lucky enough, right? To give yourself some quiet time to, you
know, tap into how you're feeling, what do you need, where are you at right now, take a deep breath, you know, get outside for a walk, get away from, you know, the computer and do all the things. Um, and slowly but surely we can, you know, come back from the
stress. And I always say like come back to self. But I I really with Rosa, thank you so much for having me and I look forward to hearing from you all. Hopefully you some of you scanned and I'll see your messages shortly and and then I'll send you all the information. Rosa. Yes. Thank you, Andrea. And I know
there was one quick question from one of the executive board uh Erica Newsome on the chat. if you also do presentations for teachers and students. Yes, thank you. Thank you, Erica. Um, yes, absolutely. So, I wanted to focus more on the parent piece today, but I do
provide um assemblies for students, you know, uh bullying, respect for all, lots of different things, mental health, and for staff uh professional developments. There's there's a whole batch of services that I offer. So, I'm going to drop in my in right here in the chat in
case anybody wants to open it before the link to my website. It's it outlines a bit more about the exact services. Um, but thank you, Erica. Great question. And yes, it's my hope that I'm able to support the entire school community because that's what I'm we're finding
that the most impact happens. So, I'm excited to um collaborate and keep up the good work and thank you everybody. And Rosa, thank you so much. I appreciate being here. Thank you for joining us and I'm sure everyone will be reaching out because as I am a lot of us
have so many roles in our school system you know from SLT title one PTA presidents executive president's council and etc etc but we all do it because we care and we love doing the work for our children. Um thank you so much for
coming and we are you have a great one everybody hang in there we're almost at the finish line. Yes. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Our next presenters are here. Thank you so much. Um on the school water quality, you guys can take it away. I believe I gave you both co-hosts. Okay.
Thank you, Rosa. Of course. Thank you. Good morning everyone. Thank you for this opportunity to talk about indoor air quality. So we me and my colleague Muhammad we are splitting between two environmental uh topics. one is indoor air quality and Muhammad will be talking about the water
quality in our course. Let me share my screen. Can you can see my screen with the presentation? Yes. Okay. So, let's get started. What is indoor air quality?
Let's start there. IQ. So, let's talk about the air we breathe. Not just outside, but inside our homes, schools, and workplaces. Quick question for you all. How much dust do you think we inhale
every day? Please type your answers or guesses in the chat. Okay, so I'm revealing the answer. Believe it or not, the average adult inhales about 2 tablespoons or 50 g of dust and airborne particles daily.
That's up to 50 billion particles per hour. That includes dirt, allergens, dead skin cells. Am I awaiting you out now? Yes. So I just wanted to create
some curiosity on the topic and I have to bring in some facts and I hope I'm doing justice to the topic at hand. Okay. So why IQ matters? Why is IQ important? You know, we spend about 90%
of our lives indoors and indoor air can be two to five times more polluted than outdoor air. Yes, there are some exceptions. They are, you know, um if you stand at a gas station, obviously the VOCC's are more than your indoor
air, but most of the time the indoor air is two to five times more polluted. So why is this a challenge? IQ is a tough topic. Often there is no one-sizefits all
solution all problems, right? But understanding the problem is the first step towards healthier spaces. Okay. So let's talk about um how do buildings breathe? You know it's an analogy just
like how we breathe through our lungs. The buildings breathe through the ventilation systems primarily HVAC systems. This the buildings with the HWAC system, the mechanical system that has filters must be, you know, on a
pretty routine basis being, you know, replaced with the newer filters. And the buildings without a HVAC system must have exhaust vents and fans to pull away the uh pollutant air from our buildings.
uh the main principle about ventilation is control the air we bring in to dilute indoor pollutants and remove contaminants. That's the whole principle about you know the ventilation system. Now that we understood a little bit about the in why indoor air quality is
important and what is indoor air quality, let's move into the contaminants of the indoor indoor uh pollutants. What are these? Most of the time these are the dust you know if you have pets at home obviously
the dander the mold spores we know this volatile organic compounds these are usually coming from the paints you know the cleaning products the furniture the nail polish removers that we all use the nail polishes sometimes hair sprays all
of these have u volatile organic compounds and volatile organic compounds are pretty serious because the particulate size is so small when we inhale it goes into our lungs and eventually it can creep into our
bloodstreams because of the size of the volatile organic compounds. If it is dust or you know pollen the particulate size is big it is heavy it settles on the floor. Usually we don't get to breathe from the floor right we are
always standing sitting we are in whatever the particulates are in the air is what we breathe and this is why VOCC's in the building has to be at a very low level okay can you think of a source of indoor pollution in your home or office
and would you mind sharing it in the chats just to make this a little bit more interesting the topic itself is a little dry I get that moving on let's talk a little bit about the health effects of poor IQ you
know the short we can divide it into two different uh categories one is the short-term effects usually when the when we have a poor indoor air quality high humidity high temperatures high VOCC's or dust we tend to have these headaches
fatigue irritant eye nose throat you can feel the unease in your environment when this is the case. So the best thing to do is you know purchasing a good vacuum and vacuuming the home pretty regularly mopping the home you know dusting off
the furnitureures. This is the basic thing that we do in our school buildings. We have the custodial and the cleaning staff every evening go to all of our schools to you know take care of this cleaning portion. What would be the long-term effects? The long-term effects
are more like the respiratory disease. You know, aggre if you already have asthma, then it aggravates the asthma and in some cases, you know, there is a decline in the cognitive um uh and the brain development for the
children. So these are pretty serious effects. We have to take into air quality with the seriousness that it deserves. And now that we spoke about the health effects, let's go to talk about how can we sorry how can we
improve indoor air quality. So the way in our schools I'll be now focusing more on our schools. How do we improve indoor air quality in our schools is for most of the newer buildings that we are building for our schools? We are installing something
called as subs slab depressurization system. What it means is it creates a kind of you know a negative pressure beneath the building which will not allow the semi volatile organic compounds to enter into our building
through the basement. And because New York City is a old city, you know, for many centuries, people have been living here, not taking care of the environment the way we are supposed to. So there lot of semi volatile organic compounds that convert into air and seep into our
buildings. And our buildings are usually closed boxes. You know, in the winter we close it for heating and in summer we close it for keeping the cold intact. So because our buildings are so closed, we need to be making sure that no VOCC's are
creeping into our building through the cracks or the holes or the basement or you know um through these openings. We also have something called as vapor barriers that we install around the perimeter of the building to make sure that again through the foundation walls
of the building the VOCC's are not getting into our buildings and HVAC filter maintenance by you know replacing the filters on a regular basis that is what is repair and maintenance of the HVAC system will help improve the IQ of
the building. Um and then installing something called as smart monitors or detectors, you know, because now we have a new state law that is going to go into effect this September where we have to
record the temperatures in our classrooms um DSF and DOE as a whole. We are thinking about installing these smart you know monitors and detectors to detect the humidity, carbon dioxide,
carbon monoxide you know VOCC's in our buildings and see how best we can mitigate the problem before it it becomes a a bigger issue right and not to say the least but you know the human nose remains the best powerful detector.
You smell something, you've got to report it. Don't take your nose for granted. Nose is the best detector. And then, you know, we don't have to spend any money there. Sometimes repeated questions from some people, you might think, oh, are we annoying health and
safety team by continuously raising concerns. No, you know, you have a reason to raise a concern. And we encourage you to let you know for us to get the issue so we can investigate a little bit deeper to see you know what
the problem is. Okay. And with that I conclude. I only got 10 minutes to do this. My colleague Mouhammad is on the clock now. So uh if you have any questions please put them in the chat. And all I can say now is, you know,
while there is no magic fix, small steps like improving ventilation, reducing chemical use, and regular cleaning can make a big difference in our homes and our schools. Over to you, Muhammad. Thank you. Um, I will share my screen.
Good morning everyone. Thanks Rosa and the executive committee for inviting us. Uh, we are here at environmental health and safety. We care about the health and safety of all the staff and students. I will just share my screen. Um, okay. Can
you all see it? Thank you. Okay. So, my name is Muhammad Hamida. I'm I work for the Department of Education um as a director of the water quality and lead compliance in the office of environmental health and safety. Um, I know that this is only about water quality, but I add up something about
lead paint because everybody should know about it. Um, we talk we will talk about our water first. One second. Um so the New York City water I don't have to tell you more about it but this is one of the best in the country. Uh we
all know we have the best pizza, the best bagels. Uh due to the water it comes in all the way from the cat skill from the reservoirs and basically it's free from lead and free from any contaminants. And also to add there's
like 600,000 testing done yearly by the city New York City D. And as you see here in the screen that little I don't know if you're old enough to remember the the telephone booth on each corner. So it's basically in every neighborhood
we have like I don't know what's the last um estimate or numbers probably it's like 600 this is D when you open this is basically has a water they collected samples every day to make sure that the water meets all the quality uh
of all the regulations um so why lead is important because basically when the water is not um is not really moving in the pipes uh we don't flush we don't wait like 30 before before we're drinking the water. It can absorb some
lead from the old uh solder and everything that was as Serita said, you know, we used to use lot of uh uh unhealthy and unenvironmentally safe stuff like the lit solder, everything was banned. Um but we still have some
little metals can be absorbed into the water stream. Um so what we do when we found any water uh exceeds the limit which is far five parts per billion I don't want to go into really technical but it's very small amount and the and
the government agencies like the state and the city they keep reducing the numbers like few years back was 20 right now is five and we adopted adhere to the most stringent one even before the regulation takes effect so right now we are at five parts per million
Um and anytime that we have uh any of this exceedences, we remove this outlet out of service. Uh we put signs for hand washing. If it's hand washing or if it's drinking, we take it off service till it's fixed. Um every building is DOE. We
test it once every 3 years. Uh we do like almost third of our all all our buildings every year. Right now we're in the last of this new cohort, we call it cohort of 2025. Um where you can find the results
of the water testing. It's everything is transparent. It's all in the website of the school. So you go to your school profile page and you click on data reports and you will have all your testing results available for any parents or anyone uh want to find out.
Uh we work with all city agencies. We have to report all our result to the uh state every 10 days like whenever we have results. Um also anytime we before we replace any fixture back into service
uh we have to really make sure that it's tested before we put it back into service. Um that conclude the water but I just want to touch a little bit on I don't know I don't know arrows I have still time five minutes. Um I can go over I can go over the lid. Uh okay. Uh
how we do how we keep track of all this? I'm still have like a couple of slides. Uh we have this uh tag uh metal tag. We have this in every single fixture that you use for drinking or cooking and we basically scan it to to eliminate any we
use the state-of-the-art um uh cutting edge systems to track and manage our uh uh water testing. So we have this handheld that is basically uh it reads uh that that label. We have 160,000 almost 160,000
um outlet that we tested. We have database and we have labels for all of them. And uh anytime that we have five parts per billion, you can you can just go online or you can ask anyone and we can tell you exactly when was tested and
what was the result of any of it. Um so we okay this is this is the painting we're going to go into the paint now the lead based paint safety uh we keep you know any any kids six years or younger
or first grade uh we have to do the testing three times a year not the testing the visual inspection of any uh space that hosts children under 6 years old or first grade or under. and for
building build before 1985. I just want to add some comments on this 1985. DOE is the only um school district in the country that they use the 1985. Everybody use 1978 which all the regulations if you Google it you find that all the regulations talks about
1978. Um that's the building that what the cutting. So we even make it farther to 1985 just to make sure that we really cover all our buildings to make you know um and then the classroom it's inspected three times a year and the common spaces
like cafeterias um gymnasium auditorium bathrooms and library it's once a year. We're going to start the next round um in in the end of the school year. So probably like the first week of uh the end of
June. How we do how we how we know that it's lead or not? So there's two methods. One is destructive which you collect like 5 g of pain chips and you send it to the lab for analysis or we can use this uh XRF which is called XRF gun but it's not actually gun. It's just
uh something you know you put it on on the paint and it just tells you uh if it is lead or not and it goes beyond the surface layer and it makes corrections to the substrate. Um also once we have that so the custodian first first the
custodian will do the inspection and then they will provide us with the result if he sees any peeling paint. It's not necessarily that all the paint is lead, but if we send the EPA inspector there uh or the consultant, then they determine if it's lead or not. And once it's done, then we take
immediate action. Um also transparent to it's all this is reported on the school. Uh the result pain testing reporting survey can be found in the school website. So you can go into uh the main DOE website and
then you can uh type uh paint reporting survey and you can you can find everything in there. Also in addition to that we can if you notice I'm not asking parents to do that but if you notice anyone can notice any peeling paint in any of the school they can actually
report it. You can be anonymous. Uh it's there is a there is a form in there and you can indicate you know if you see any peeling paint in your child or or your classroom if you're a teacher. Let's conclude all and we open
for actually me and my colleague Sarita we can take any questions about uh I don't know if we have any time we have one minute uh any questions obviously you can always put it in the chat and we can answer you uh once we have the answer for you. No problem. Thank you so
much. Absolutely. That was I love information. I love transparency and that's what we offer here. Um we will be taking uh one or two questions if possible. Uh Jelle, you have a question?
Yes. Sorry, my uh phone was not working. Uh yeah. Um, so I have a question. Would you be able to answer like uh questions about water fountain repairs or is that more construction authority? I'm sorry. Water water fountain repairs. Water
fountain repairs. Yes. Yeah. Go ahead. You can ask. Okay. Uh, so the school at PS220Q, um, their water fountains have been under repair for about a year now. Um they said that they're done they're done
with the with the repairs but they haven't um turned them on. I don't know if um what who I can reach out to about that. Um the school has also reached out to to the construction but they haven't
um heard back and and this was because our district ch like the the councilman changed and so it kind of got moved around the responsibilities. They're not sure who who's responsible now. No problem. We will find out. We will check
with the custodians and the deputy director of facilities for this district and we'll get back to you. Right. Absolutely. Because I this is really important. A lot of the water fountains, we want the children to have all the hydration they need to continue
with their school work. Uh thank you so much. I know Muhammad will follow up with you. We'll connect you via email too just in case. Uh okay. Thank you guys so much. Please do send me this slide so it can be shared with everyone as every single month and we will move
on with our next presentation. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Um, Meredith, you are next and then we'll go with the next presentation. Perfect. Thank you so much. Can everybody hear me? Okay, great. Good morning, everybody. Uh, thank you so
much for having me. I'm I'm very pleased to be here. Uh, my name is Meredith McDermott. I'm the chief sustainability and decarbonization officer for New York City public schools uh, under the division of operations and finance. And I was very happy to see questions
rolling in about our solar schools program. So I am going to go ahead and share my screen here. Let's hope this works. Okay, can you all see that? Can you see anything yet? Okay,
great. Thank you. I can see the thumbs up now. Let's hope that continues. Okay, here we go. I'm just going to change this here. There we go. Okay, now I can't see any of you, so it gets a little strange, but bear with me for one moment. So, again,
I'm Meredith McDermott. Um, thank you again for having me. We do a lot of different uh programs. We're of course not going to talk about everything here today, but hopefully this gives you um an understanding of not only one of our key programs, but also sort of a little bit more about our general approach to school sustainability. This is something
that we've been working hard on for many years. Um, our solar schools program in particular uh was one that really started quite a few years ago uh and has been on this kind of very steady positive trajectory uh for many years. So we're now at a time where we're
making a lot of really really good progress and and hoping to of course keep that keep that going. So, as of right now, we are there's I'm trying to sort of minimize some of the technical things, but there are certain measurements and things. If anybody has any questions about any of this at any
time, whether it's now or later, I'm happy to. I was going to say, Meredith, it shows your current slide and it shows the next slide, just in case. I don't know if that's how you meant. I didn't, but I don't know why it's doing that because I tried to change
the display settings. Can you Can you still see? Yeah, I don't It is good. Okay, great. Thank you. Yeah, I don't know why I was doing that. I'm like trying to I know it gets a little distracting. So, as of right now, we've got 119 total completed uh rooftop
solar installations. So, it's 119 buildings. So, if you think about it, you know, as you all know, uh a lot of times we have multiple schools in one building. Uh so, this is really covering a lot more buildings than that 119. It's probably closer to like 150 schools. uh again in one of those those 119
buildings. And so the total amount of solar installed is what we call it's measured in what we call megawws. So it's the measurement is 25.4. Cool thing to note here like the the sort of key statistic is that New York City public
schools we make up over 80% of the city's total progress to date in solar installations on city- owned buildings. So we're we're most of it. We have a lot of opportunity. We've got the largest building portfolio. It makes a lot of sense, of course, for that to occur. Um,
so we're, you know, we've actually completed a pretty good chunk of projects. Um, over the last couple years alone, as you can imagine with any program, oftentimes when you're starting out, you're working with different contractors. It's kind of things go right. It's a brand new thing for
everyone. So, it was a little bit of a slower start, but now we're really kind of moving fast. Um, in addition to those 119 completed projects, we've got another 96 uh that are currently in various stages of of kind of the overall process,
whether it's design, engineering, con actual construction, or near closeout, meaning it's about ready to be counted and added to that total completed project number. So, that'll get us to I think it's over what 44 uh total megawws
we're hoping to complete. We've got nine projects currently in construction right now that we're hoping we can complete by the end of this fiscal year. Um, in addition to those projects, we have been working for for quite a while with a variety of different partners on five
what we call resilient uh solar and battery storage projects. um what these really are, not all of our solar installations have um a battery to store all of the clean energy that's generated on site. So, what we are doing is we're
working uh with the Economic Development Corporation and a few other city agencies to at some of our school buildings that serve as emergency shelters. We want to be able to in the event of an emergency, we want to be able to provide backup power, you know,
again, in case we're have a we have a blackout, we have a brown out, something major happens, a major storm event, you know, a lot of our schools, as many of you know, serve as emergency shelters. Um, many of them serve as critical what we call tier one emergency shelters. So, meaning we've got some interesting
facilities that a lot of people in our communities are really relying upon, uh, especially if and when needed. So, we're hoping to be able to bring these online. This has been uh a sort of an interesting thing. Excuse me. And that there's a lot of safety
considerations. Sorry about that, guys. I've had a scratchy throat. There's a lot of safety considerations, of course. So, we've been working handinhand with FDNY, Department of Buildings to make sure that anything that we're putting infrastructure- wise on a school building that's new, of course, the
first thing that leads all of it is safety. a battery for, you know, to tie to a solar project is about the size of a shipping container. So, it's not like a double A battery or AAA battery. They're sizable. So, you can imagine not all of our schools have that physical space. So, we're we're really trying to
do this in an intelligent way that does not impede any outdoor space in particular. Again, that's a big priority for for many of our schools as well. So, we would never want to impede that. So, we've also got another 200 or so uh
school buildings being assessed for future solar projects. So, just so you know, about a third of our buildings I'm just going to mute for one second so I can cough. I'm sorry about that, guys. Just need water. Sorry about
that. So, we're constantly looking at our building stock. Again, we've got over 1500 buildings. Not all of our buildings have what we consider to be a solar ready condition, which we're going to talk about on the next slide, but we still do have a very large building
portfolio. Every couple of years, there's a there's actually a formal sort of feasibility study that goes out under local law 24. It's really just the city's municipal solar readiness report. So if you Google that, you can find it online that really goes through all of
the the sites throughout the city across other agencies that have been determined to be solar ready at the time of that report. And that's of course especially important for us to kind of use as a guide to be able to determine, okay, what's next, what buildings to be able to prioritize sites. We're always trying
to do this across our bureaus as well. So, just to kind of give you the program at a glance, uh when it comes to our different burrows, um we've got quite a good amount of projects uh in each of our burrows. Again, please know again this is a work in progress. What we really started with this program was a
lot of our larger facilities as you can imagine. You know, we want to really be able to maximize the clean energy that we're generating on site. And so, we started with a lot of these bigger buildings. Of course, you know, a lot of those bigger buildings are really in the outer burrows. We also have to consider such things, you know, beyond just the
structural uh feasibility, we also have to consider such factors as like shading. So for example, in Manhattan, as you can imagine, it can be a little bit tougher to site solar just because of all the surrounding buildings. So there's a lot of shading that can happen from other buildings, you know, and on
the flip side of that, in some of our uh our even our outer burrows, you know, they might have more physical space and like really large nice rooftops, but there's also a lot of trees. So this is also a good thing. We want we want to be able to we're certainly not going to be, you know, we don't want to we want to
keep the trees. We want to keep all the trees that we can. So it's just a matter of kind of working our way sort of from out to in and making sure that there's, you know, equitable distribution um across all of our all of our burrows. So as I mentioned previously,
we've currently got about 25 megawws installed. Again, that's across those 119 uh total rooftop solar installations. And I know that these numbers might not mean anything to anyone, but one of the key drivers for doing all this work in New York City and many places is really we're trying to
reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. And so we with all of our projects completed to date, we've reduced nearly 10,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide, what we call carbon dioxide equivalent. And so that's, you know, looking at some of these statistics, you really see that
that's that's like powering over 4,000 homes. It's re removing over 2,000 vehicles from the road, planting over 150,000 trees. And if you think about the visual of 75 football fields that are all just solar panels, it kind of puts it into context. And again, that's
only with 119 installations. Our goal is of course to put solar on as many of our school rooftops um and hopefully other places as well um as much as we possibly can. So it's a it's a pretty big impact uh and we're proud that our public schools get to be uh representing this
you know this investment that the city's making in clean energy infrastructure. You know we would be remiss to also not connect it to our staff and students which we're going to go through in just one second. But, you know, some of the key drivers other than those emissions reductions that I spoke of, you know,
we're really looking to protect our electrical grid. You know, some of you may know that there's a big push on in sort of climate action and decarbonization and sustainability, especially with our buildings. Buildings in New York City comprise they make
about 70% of our emissions come from our buildings. Makes a lot of sense. We we live in a dense urban environment. There's a lot of different energy and types of energy being used uh to power our buildings, you know, our businesses, our homes, our institutions. So, it's a
it's a very big footprint. So, energy in New York City, energy management is especially important. you know, one of the there's a lot of these great features and and benefits and and positive impacts from our program, but we're also really trying to contribute
positively not only to our school buildings themselves, but also to our sort of larger New York City um and region in general because as we are putting more and more pressure on our electrical grid, we have really hot summers. You know, those heat
emergencies seem to be increasing. There's a lot of demand on our electrical grid. We're also in order to further decarbonize our buildings. There's a lot of emphasis being put on electrifying our our buildings, our school buildings included. And so, as
we're kind of pulling away from using natural gas and fuel oils to heat our buildings and relying more on electricity, these types of programs become even more important, you know. Oh, so we really we're we're really uh excited about the resilience aspect of
our solar program um as well, you know, beyond just reducing uh air pollution and also helping to save the city uh costs on our heat, light, and power budget. So part of this program um that I personally uh you know find to be the
most optimal benefit of course and and really is very unique to doing this type of program uh in public schools is that we are really we've leveraged from the very beginning of this program over 10 years ago. We really wanted to leverage the opportunity that it presents to our
schools themselves beyond just the buildings. And so we created a couple of different great education programs to really make sure that, you know, you can't necessarily see a rooftop solar installation. Not all of our rooftops are accessible. Not everybody can see it from, you know, you can't see it from
street level. So we really wanted to think about that. We want people to know that a this is happening, but b this is really why it's happening so that we can create sort of these really interesting and very relevant uh teaching and learning opportunities uh for our
teachers and students. us most specifically. So proud to say that we've we've had our New York City solar school education programs running for uh 10 years now. Uh we have a so just a couple of different examples. We've we created uh with partner our partners at Solar
One. Uh it with funding from the city that we have to apply to and get every single year. Uh we've set up a solar career and technical education program. This is a really great program. It's a workforce development program. uh we work in partnership with the office of student pathways and really what this
does is it takes sort of all of this great content. It actually helps both teachers and students specifically to learn about what it means and what it looks like to actually install solar. Uh and so they're learning all of these
hard skills. you know, they they get this this really intensive hands-on training to how to install solar panels um you know, on rooftops and other places. So, very cool. This is a obviously a burging industry and one
that's expected to uh kind of thrive uh you know, even more so moving into the future as we become more and more reliant on clean energy. So currently this program is operating in 17 different career and technical education high schools across the city. Uh this
content that was developed specifically to do this program is integrated into existing electrical trades uh construction and engineering tracks at these high schools. Uh a very very great program. It's touched several thousand
students at this point. Um, and some of those students have gone on to do internships. And some of those students actually did internships for some of our solar installers that we use to install on our public schools. And some of some of our students actually helped to
install solar at some of our schools themselves, which is kind of the dream, right? The more we can do those types of things, you know, we know we're on the right path. Another thing that we do to support our teachers is uh again in partnership with Solar One, excuse me,
we've created a climate and energy education intensive program. This is a free professional development program for any New York City public school teacher. This is kind of broken out into grade bands. So, we've got elementary, middle, high school. The high school
options are further broken down into specific subjects, which is really really handy because what this does is it provides real standards aligned curriculum for our for our teachers, which means that they're more apt to use this information. So, there's some other
um initiatives kind of kicking around with Office of Student Pathways to really focus on our buildings, building performance, building science, but really looking at sustainability opportunities as a whole. um to you know think about possibilities for the future for programming that are going to
directly benefit our students. So beyond solar, we're currently uh doing a massive LED lighting upgrade program in partnership uh with the Department of Citywide Administrative Services and the New York Power Authority. Uh this is called our direct install program and
the goal under that program is to have 800 buildings uh upgraded. Um, this is also just part of the LED lighting uh program that we're doing. We're also currently also trying to get funding to do an additional several hundred
buildings in order to be in compliance with local law, but also because a lot of our buildings need LED uh lighting upgrade and we have a lot more buildings than 800. Uh, we're also managing over $20 million in energy efficiency projects. We we apply for funding uh to
the city every year on an annual basis and we just we we do all different types of programs looking at our heating systems, our mechanical systems, ventilation systems uh and our lighting systems of course uh to just again really make our buildings more efficient but also to increase our occupancy
comfort as well. Uh so just a couple of other examples of you know we're receiving some state grant funding. Um and then we also have a fantastic energy resilience program called demand response. Uh this is a peak demand sort
of emergency response program. So when it gets really really hot the utility companies ask us to kind of back off our electrical use and that's very much to directly mitigate the risk of blackouts and brownouts. Again that's in the summer. We also have one for natural gas
and that's to ensure uh that all New York City residents uh and businesses are able to heat their buildings on really really cold days in the winter. So again, just another kind of testament to uh that resiliency uh opportunity
that we have. So you know, so I'm hoping that some of you have heard of our office or some of our other major programs. I'll run through these very quickly. Um we last year launched a citywide initiative uh called our citywide climate action days. So so far there have been about four different
days every school year that are focused on a different theme in sustainability. We have waste, water, energy, and then health, wellness, and green space. Uh our next up is in a couple of weeks on May 21st. Uh it is our water climate action
day. It also happens to be the day of one of our youth climate summits. Uh we do these annually usually with high school students and this year we're offering a youth climate summit for the first time for middle school students and those will take place on Governor's Island. These are student centric
events. They're also led by our youth leadership council. We work with a group of high school students all year every year. We've been running this program for about seven years. uh these students really envision this these events and other things and they are also the ones
to facilitate develop and facilitate workshops for other students. Uh it's a fantastic event. Uh we have a grant program like I mentioned before. We do a lot of different uh professional learning for teachers including uh a midwinter climate institute where we
have over 500 teachers attend uh and about 40 to 50 partner organizations doing workshops multi-day uh really really good engagement on those things as well. We also have we support schools to do curbside composting that was completed
to all of our schools as of last spring. I I believe the chancellor will be speaking a little bit more about this uh as well, but all of our schools now have curbside composting programs as of spring of 2024. Uh our office of people transportation has done a tremendous job
in working to get grants to be able to support our bus vendors uh to electrify our school bus fleet. So, uh 180 new buses again under various EPA grants. Federal grant funding has been a particular challenge of course recently. Uh however, we're there this is still
very much a goal and like I mentioned OPT has been working very hard on this. We also support uh a school-based uh sustainability coordinator network. So for those of you who don't know, principles are supposed to designate a sustainability coordinator every fall.
This person can be anybody in a school except a principal and or a custodian engineer. It can be anyone. It can be anybody else. It's typically a teacher. It can also be an assistant principal, a paraprofessional, a parent coordinator, uh, etc. And this person is really the
primary point of contact for programs, initiatives, uh, and you know, it's kind of a it's just a great contact for us. It's also a great contact for the rest of the school. We do a lot of different things to support our school-based sustainability coordinators. So, if you are interested in learning more, and again, I'm happy
to sort of share this afterwards. Of course, uh, we do have a sustainability hub. It's basically a re resource portal. It's got a lot more information about all of our different programs and projects and things and also a lot of
our our partner uh network information as well. We also do annual reports. So, I encourage you uh to check out our last edition of our annual report which captures progress across last school year. So again, that was a 2023 2024 school year, but a lot of really good
information in there that kind of covers the the broader sort of scope um of all of our different work. Uh but with that, I will I will wrap it up and just say thank you so much. Does anybody have any any questions at all? I know we're probably pressed for time, but I'm happy to answer them another time as well.
Yeah, thank you so much, Meredith. This was a lot of information, and I do have one quick question before you, Adriana. I apologize. um the school-based sustainability coordinators, right? I know that we have extensive work um and I know
presentations I know um Elizabeth's chat has presented numerous time even last month and um yes yes yes so I wanted to know where can we see that report per school or per district is that disclosed
to everyone how does that work and then Adriana your question so are you referring to just basically who has designated or not designated ated a sustainability coordinator. Should all the schools have a a designated
Yeah. Yes. So, we do there's a lot of different things. Um, we also work with school school principles just to make sure that they have support and kind of know, you know, that this isn't just an automatic designation. I mean, there's a lot of people that want to do this role that have actually serving been serving
in this role for a number of years. Um we do a lot of follow-up during the sort of designation time of the year which happens um it happens in late fall and so actually it's late September right so
with that we we do different trainings we do a lot of outreach like if somebody hasn't designated a coordinator we typically will do follow-up outreach to the school principal we are absolutely able to provide a like to the superintendent's office for example we're able to provide
kind of a breakdown to say, "Yeah, you know, here we are, we don't have this." And we've gone in and done different meetings with different superintender superintendents. Um, just to kind of discuss like their compliance with it. This is per uh chancellor's regulation A850. Um, but what we take very
seriously and value is the network of people and, you know, yes, it is a compliance piece, but we we really just want to support this to happen because it is such an important role. Um, and so there's a lot of different ways that we
both have and can and could uh, you know, you know, so I I if you guys ever have any ideas about how to sort of further tether all of this work to just sort of broader stakeholder groups, I mean, including parents, of course, um, you know, we're sort of all ears. We we
really take outreach very seriously to all of our different uh, school and community stakeholders. um instead of just working with kind of one sliver of the organization, we really try to work across the organization um at depth as much as possible. Absolutely. Thank you
so much. Um I would love to have a side conversation afterwards. Yeah, Adriana, your question pretty quick because we're past time. Sorry. So, sorry. So, yes, years ago, my school was evaluated for solar panels, but our roof was not in good shape and now we're getting a new
roof. So, with that being said, I see it on the chat. Is our superintendent is there a list that's accessible to know if and when which schools were assessed for these solar panels and when is the next time they get assessed or what is the ongoing um procedure for our schools
to get assessed for this program? Thank you. Yeah, so that's a great that's a great question and I do actually have some other information about just site selection itself. So, like I mentioned, this the the best way to look at this is a very it's hard to have it the list
live at any given time because of the dynamic nature of things. You know, a roof could be new. It could still experience bubbling or leaks or things like that. You know, there's always things that can happen to a structure. The best way to look at the most recent
assessment, which I believe was only about a year ago, is local law 24. It's disease. And I'm happy to share this um as well. Maybe Elizabeth, great. She's she just shared it in the chat. If you look at that, it actually has a full list of what are what we what have been
determined to be our sort of eligible or solar ready rooftops. Now, like I said, this is being assessed on an ongoing basis. If your school or schools in your community, if they if they were determined not to be solar ready many years ago, but you know that they either
now have or are getting a new rooftop, rest assured that that absolutely would be included in the matrix. We worked very very closely with the school construction authority um just to talk about not only like conflicts, project conflicts and things but also on the
roof replacement sort of capital plan. So essentially when they're putting and we advocate for roof replacements and capital investments in roof replacements because we do have a lot of old roofs and typically we try to eyeball like 10 years or less you know in terms of age
as our first pass but you know things that currently that have active roof warranties things like that but that is always changing. So the the goal is to be able to stay working in very tight conjunction with the school construction authority to advocate with city council
for example for more and more rooftop replacements because what that does is that enables us to have basically more space to play with. So the more of that that happens so yeah so this so these feasibility studies are happening on an ongoing basis. This report comes out
every two years. But again, if you know that there's something that's happening at at your school rooftop and and it's being replaced, that'll take a little while to replace. But absolutely, you can reach out to sustainabilityschools.nyc.gov anytime.
That's our office. That's literally Elizabeth Shad, whom you met a few weeks ago, who was on today. Um, and and we also have so we've got a solar team. It's it's it's small but mighty. Um, but we'd be happy to help any of you with any of that specific information anytime. Right. And the email, um,
Elizabeth's email is going to everyone also. So, if you have further questions, just reach out directly. We are going to move on with the next presentation. Thank you so much, Marie. My pleasure. Thank you all so much. Appreciate it. And if you can send the slide, that would be awesome. So, we can send it to
everyone too for further questions. Yep, we'll do. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you, Elizabeth, for being here too. Um, Baldi, good morning. I hope you hear me. Yes. Um, Meredith, if you want to take out your slides. Yes. Oh, yeah. Sorry. Yep.
Good morning, everyone. Um, thank you, Meredith. Um, I know it's not really amazing presentation, Merid, and I'm so excited about everything as you mentioned. This is the future, this is the present, you know, technology, solar panel, and all that. and thank you for
everything you do uh to support our schools. Um again everyone good morning. I am my name is Abdullah Balde, farm leadership coordinator for new vision district and um we serve
37,000 families. We have 60 schools. Um do you see my screen? Yes. No. Okay. Um, so I'm trying. Okay, it's still not
showing up. Okay, so I already mentioned that. So we are new vision high school district. I you know this is just something we need to share and so people to understand um you know what's the difference between us
and our new vision nonprofit. And so we we as I mentioned served more than 37,000 families and 60 schools all five borrows. Um so because of the time uh I'm here you know to speak about
transfer of record right um it's so exciting um topic so first I know we have lot of knowledgeable expert in the house but can I just ask to put in the chat in se I mean in June what you will you transfer if if you volunteer just
put something you would think you will transfer in the chat um if possible um So because this is really one of the most important steps um on having a
successful um you know um PTA. So it is important that um the outgoing uh PTA boards you know help um
the incoming PTA board um with the resources that they already have that also it's like anything they have as like emails right um bank account financial record right um making sure
that they um the newly elected SFD board receive all the resources and with also proof right. So um it can be a paper or like
electronic form and also these um document must um be maintained on the school premises right um so there's also a timeline to keep
um this record must kept at least 6 years um within um the school premises right um speaking about bylaws, um, meeting notice, agendas and many,
right? So, it is important to every for everybody for the success of the upcoming or like new elected PTA board to receive all this key information so they will be able to
function uh, efficiently, right? So, And I will repeat myself but just to make sure that um um it's clear that you know my hope the hope is like currently
we this is like in May that most of our schools that already have their election um they already scheduled right so we are speaking about transfer record but just the hope is that we already have um the the day of the election and we are
we already know we already have an election committee um an election chairperson that will really do the election and after that we going to speak about the transfer of record but because of the topic of the day is the transfer of record um it is really key
for to make sure that all stakeholders u work together to make sure that we we We we we we ensure like a a transfer of record that is really um you know um that everyone knows what they need to do
because um like especially for the PTA every every year um we have an election. So if it's not this um especially if we have new newly elected PTA board members they really uh need a support from the
outgoing PTA board members. So um and also making sure that um the transfer must take place on a school premises in the presence of the principal as as soon as practical
following the election. Right. Um and the PTA record that have been used in the legal action must be retained for the entire period of the legal action. Right. Um special attention must be paid to ensure that
document created in electronic from remaining available and accessible like we speaking about password right. So if the outgoing um PTA um leave without like giving them access or showing them
what to do, it will be not easy for them to start really uh um you know in in in a good position. Next. Um, so I already mentioned this like we see like emails, minutes,
meeting minute, um, password, invoices like annual financial report, election certification, right? So um any other like important document or like uh and
also materials like it can be also like uh if the P pa or the PTA have like u a computer or a printer that's also be trans should be transfer right um anything really that
um you think so working also closely with the parent coordinator the principal Um making sure that everyone knows um um what is happening and when it's happening and and
um like like making sure that we have full transparency during that the transfer of record um the date um is June 30th. transfer of record meeting must occur no later than June 30th of each school year, right? So
the hope is from April 1, you already have um you know you're going to start like having this election but no later than June 30th the transfer of record will happen before like uh um uh the outgoing PTA or PA members leave the
office. Uh these are just example of uh I will put in the chat like uh the pattern association June transfer record um sample and um there's a guide so we do not need to reinvent the wheel the guide
is already there with all the thing that I just listed like a minute ago and u so also we have different responsibilities right so we have the PTA president, we have the secretary, we
have the treasur. All these people have different responsibilities. So, everyone according to their role and responsibilities should um you know um transfer the information or anything under their responsibility and sign
under their name. Um so speaking about transfer of of record we know now technology um people like um I know like um from September 2020 um five we're going to uh we start
implementing um uh the do external email for parents right so um with that you also have like Google uh Google drive right it will a people able to collaborate better and if
they want to share like collaborate even though you are the PTA president the secretary you can collaborate in in one Google drive document or folder so this is just like a sample I know most of you guys knows about that but you just make
sure that so if you have parents that are new to the city or maybe English is not their first language or um they are not well integrated So it will be always helpful to guide them and support them to make sure they feel comfortable and
welcome and that somebody is teaching them how really to to use maybe Google Drive or or or like they can speak with the parent corner of the school so they know what to do. Um and um normally um
if someone guide the parents uh we have um these documents especially with all the what I shared with you in different languages also if you want I will be able to share that with you. Um so definitely um it is if you want um you
have you need more questions or you can email facechools@nyc.gov or also PTA link or you know you can also email me at a bald school.nyc.gov. Um I'm not sure if it was fast but I
just want to reate reinstate what I mentioned before. It is really important to make sure that all stakeholders are involved um within the transfer of record. That mean the
outgoing and uh uh the incoming PT PTA members that all with all members should be present the president, the treasurer and the secretary you know and uh uh information should be kept in the school
premises and um you know making sure that you have the election certification, the bers um and EIN numbers, bank account you know anything that's emails you know so all these
things that are really um important to to make sure that you know when you leave that the incoming PTA will be able to function independently and efficiently in collaboration with um u
school administration and the parent coordinator um I don't know if anyone have a question or like if Rosa or any other parent leaders on this call have anything to add please or ask me
questions. Thank you. Thank you Balde. I know Bald is one of my FLC's. Thank you so much for um our partnership throughout these years. Does anyone have any questions for BA? And also please
raise your hand. And to remind everyone, if any of your PAPTA is having an any problem or doesn't know uh or they're new, right? Also, utilize your your president's
council, right? We're there to help you. We're there to support you. We we work directly with the superintendent uh team uh to to train everyone to train the new uh pairing leaders and also CPAC
utilize CPAC. Uh we're very knowledgeable. We have a lot of information to share. Um please let us know. Does anyone have any questions? Raise your hand. Yes, I see I see a question in know maybe a comment. Yes. So yeah, Google Drive and also can let
you transfer ownership. Yes, that's correct. Yes. And also collaborate through folders, you know, and um that was from D28. Yes, thank you for highlighting that. So and also with uh I just going to add add that quickly, but
also with um Google external um D external that is coming in September. Um really um parent will have more tools available for them to work together like uh we have uh slides uh and sheet that
they can you know Microsoft 365 zoom everything is incorporated within DOE external yeah I see a hand raise and ever go ahead please one quick question go ahead go
ahead sweetie go ahead no one quick question. Real quick question. Oh, oh, oh, sorry. So, since he brought it up Oh, since he brought up the external email, I've been bringing this up. When are we going to get something actually on paper in an email so we could actually share this information? Because
by word of mouth, it's not working for me to share with my PTA. So, I actually need some kind of document step by step to share with my PTA presence if that's possible to do this email and whatever it is that the DOE is expecting before September. Thank you. Thank you so much.
I think I don't know which uh which district or which school but normally uh as far as I know I attended trainings where some parent coordinators had attended and also attended trainings around that. So normally all schools please speak with your parent
coordinators or district contact person they'll be able to help you with that with the presentation. There's also a presentation that has been shared by the ITT that's available that's public. Um so I think um you can also email um
tech@nyc.co maybe they will be able to respond but definitely yes this is ongoing project and is in progress currently um yes so hopefully uh before the end of June um the things will really move fast around that. Okay I
hope I answer your question. Yeah, thank you. Um, with regards to the DOE external, we are going to have the IIIT next month so everyone can have more clarity as to what is going to happen.
So, please don't don't worry about that. Everyone will have the same information next month. Uh, and we are moving on because there's a lot of things on the agenda. Thank you so much. So, yes. So, thank you so much, Rosa, for your partnership, all the parent leaders that I recognize
on this call for for your time, for your availability. Um, thank you and have a wonderful rest of your day. Thank you so much, Baldi. And we are moving on. I believe Jesse is here with any updates on face.
Thank you, Rosa. Thank you, members. Always an honor and privilege to be here. Uh I wanted to first start with uh I know we shared before but just once again acknowledging uh teacher appreciation week. Um we can never say enough about all of our
educators. I've been in a very reflective uh mode uh this week because my youngest graduates college on Saturday. So I think about all the educators that have impacted his life um over the years and and what you know. And just really quickly one one quick
thing. I remember him in fifth grade. I'll never forget this teacher, Mrs. Vasquez. And uh that was a time with my youngest, my my oldest was going through a lot of different challenges, you know, with epilepsy and with some some challenges with regards to, you know, just just some challenges. I'll just put it there. And we as a family were
supporting him. And I remember his uh fifth grade teacher reaching out to me and saying, "I like to talk to you about Miguel. Uh he's going through some things." And I and I thought I knew what it was. I said, "Yeah, no, we're going through we're supporting his brother and his brother's going through a tough time and he's, you know, loves his brother very much." She says, "No, that's not
what he's going that's not what he's concerned about. He's concerned about you and he's concerned about you, you know, holding it together and holding the family together." And I remember like that conversation and that insight from that educator helped transform my relationship with my youngest son. And
so it's just an one of thousands of examples that I'm sure all of us have of the positive impact of educators in our lives. So I am just so deeply grateful and always humbled and honored to work among them. Um, also in May, I just wanted to also acknowledge that Sunday
is Mother's Day. So, I just wanted to one wish all all moms on the on the call a happy Mother's Day as well as also acknowledge that sometimes Mother's Day is a very difficult time for many uh who have lost mothers who don't have mothers in their in their lives anymore. And I
just wanted to acknowledge that and I and know that Mother's Day is also a day where we remember the mothers that we have lost and but who remain in our hearts uh forever uh and will never be forgotten. Their impact is always here with us. And also wanted to echo before
I go into my updates the appreciation to the executive board uh for their partnership and collaboration uh in sharing case studies yesterday with our family leadership coordinators at the monthly professional learning session. It was phenomenal and I just wanted to
personally thank Rosa, Randy, Erica, Ashley, Josephina, and Rebecca for their incredible incredible um just participation presentation. Um I'm always very much in deep appreciation of our collaboration and I'm always very
humbled, you know, to I use the word humbled all the time because I truly am humbled to to be working collaboration with CPAC. Over the years, I have seen uh the Chances Parent Advisory Council. I've been here 14 years. I' I've seen the Chances parent advisory council take on many different issues. Always expert
in their issues. Always very very much welcoming with with their information to newer members. And it was just, you know, just such a pleasure um to have all of you, the executive board there working in collaboration with us. So once again, I I loudly applaud all of
you and I thank you so much for for for being a part of yesterday. So, on to face updates. Um, so as we know, um, we are in the midst of a CC election process and voting started on April 25th, uh, and it's going through May
13th. So, we're encouraging everyone to please get out and vote. You know, please encourage everyone to vote and make your voice heard. um as part of the um voting process, one of the things that we did most recently on April 25th,
we had two different events to encourage um courage participation. One was a voting information session that we held to kind of share with with all um information about the voting process, answer questions um and that was in parallel with how how this election
process has been going in the sense of like when the application period started. We also had an uh information session on the application period. So we did that for the voting session as well. And we had um you know we want to lead by example and we had a uh employee
voting drive here uh at tweed where the chancellor herself you know cast her vote where the deputy chancellor uh Dr. Christina Melendez cast her vote members of cabinet who are you know who have children in the school system cast their votes. So it was it was wonderful. It
was also on the 25th. We also extended it, you know, a few other days and encouraged our employees at Tweed who have children in our New York City public school system to also, you know, um, uh, lend their voice to the conversation and vote uh because we feel that it is important for all of us to vote. And we wanted to set that example
as well and encourage schools to do similarly like where uh, we could set up workstations and um, and and establish what we call voting parties to encourage uh, parents to to vote. And if parents don't have access, you know, uh to the internet at their home, definitely set
up workstations where they can vote at the school. So that was, you know, something that we did on the 25th and we encourage, you know, um our schools to do the same. Uh also want to talk about the working group. So we have had an election working group throughout this
entire process. I just wanted to publicly thank again all of the members of the working group. uh it has been extremely informative for us to to uh one make make improvements to the process both currently and also think about future improvements. So I just
wanted to continue to thank the members of the working group. Our next working group session will be on May 29th. Um I'll have the team include a link u to register. Once again the working group is open to all and it you know if you had not attended any working group
sessions prior to this you are welcome. You don't have to have had to have attended uh working group sessions before. You're welcome. Your voice is welcome and your input is is deeply valued and welcomed. Um also wanted to thank district 18. Um we had a town hall
meeting uh with the chancellor on Monday. It went very very well. Wanted to thank all of the members of the district 18 community and we look forward to engaging uh in our future town halls. We have quite a few coming up in June. Um, we have uh district 8,
17, 32, 16, and 14 coming up until the rest of the year. And we look forward to uh our remaining town halls for the year. We thank all of the districts for the town halls that have happened so far this year. And also mentioning that CR663 regulation uh has been posted for
public comment uh and will be before the PEP on 618. um with regard I know that um our office of language access uh has you know had an information session earlier um this this year uh on some of those changes um and it is posted and
and we encourage everyone to look at the posting and and add your changes and comments to that um before it goes to the PEP on the 18th. Um also wanted to mention uh that we had uh previously a
uh face hosted over 400 parent coordinators um also in with the parent coordinators we had our FLC's FSC's colleagues from other New York City public school offices for a parent coordinator uh um conference where we also had a resource fair and at the
resource fair we had we featured about 48 uh tableabling partners representing cultural institutions, community based organizations across the city. Um, parent coordinators had the chance to connect one-on-one with uh with these partners, you know, pick up materials,
resources, and the idea was to bring that information back to the school um in order for to establish new relationships, new resources. Um, our parent coordinators, as we all know, are essential partners in the work with us, and anything that we can do to to help support them, we will do. Um, so that
was our PC conference. Also want to uh mention that um our train the trainer series which is the next step of our faces New York City city reads work is going forward and going well. Um the train the trainer series serves as the
next step of faces of NYC reads work. It's designed to equip the 211 about 211 uh New York City reads ambassadors from each district with the skills to share foundational knowledge of the science of reading with their communities. Um the program is a is a deep dive into the
stages of reading um phonics vocabulary comprehension strategies and it's also paired with the creation of a project that each ambassador can then run in their school or and their community. So the goal is to empower parents not only as literacy supporters for their own children but as confident peer leaders
who can guide others. Um so with that said I know that I' I've shared a lot. Uh, thank you, Madam Chair, always for for the opportunity to to share some of Face's work and I'm happy to take any questions. Yes. Thank you so much, Jesse. It's
always a pleasure uh seeing you guys in person. Love that. Always being in community. Does anyone have any question? Please raise your hand. We have like six more minutes left.
questions. You answer everyone's questions, I guess. Okay. I'm not sure if this is related. Caroline, you want to unmute? Maybe not. Okay. Thank you so much. I think uh to promote the
election, she wants to have a banner. So, what I I could do is I can talk to Caroline. Is it Caroline? Caroline offline and we can we can work on that. Yeah, absolutely. We sent banners to all of the schools, but I'll I'll double check to to if there if Caroline, you haven't received a banner at your
school. Um we could talk offline, we can make that happen. All right. Always looking for solutions. Okay. Thank you so much. Uh, is our amazing chancellor here yet? Okay. So, we can what we can do I'm
sorry, Madam Chair. I was just responding to your question. I don't see her yet, but any any moment, I believe. Yes. Yes. Yes. So [Music] um what we can do is go to the next presentation but as soon as the chancellor comes in if the next
presenter will you be able to please pause to have the uh chancellor and then we can resume. Okay. Um I believe uh Pette I see
you. Where were you? You were just right here in my in front of my screen. Did she leave? I am here. Sorry. Uh we're getting deliveries here at the office, so I had to uh just take myself off camera just to so it wasn't
distracting. But hi. Thank you, Plet. Thank you so much for being here. Um, just in case, I don't know if you heard, but once the chancellor comes in, we'll do a little pause. Okay. Thank you. Now, your co-host. Thank you so much for being here. You take it away. Uh, thank
you. Thank you so much, everyone. It's so wonderful to see so many wonderful uh familiar faces. Um, uh, we we really don't appreciate our parent leaders um, enough. So being being one myself still um in different
capacities, uh I just wanted to thank you first and foremost for the opportunity to present on behalf of the civic engagement commission. Um I am the Brooklyn Burough um particip participatory budget coordinator. So that is my capacity today and we are
about to launch uh the vote phase for the people's money campaign. So um in a nutshell I do have a presentation. Do you have that, Rosa, by any chance or? Honestly, I've been having tech difficulties with our emails. I
apologize. I do not have the presentation. That's okay. No worries. I will pull it up. Um, and I see that my friend Anthony uh who is part of our outreach team is coming in as well. So, just give me one moment as he comes in and um I will pull up our presentation
and allow Anthony to introduce himself. Anthony, are you good? Uh can everybody hear me? Yep, we can hear you. Fantastic. Okay, great. Hi everybody. Um is it still morning? Good morning everyone here. Uh nice to be with you
all. [Music] Um Paula, will the presentation be uploaded or should I share my screen? you can share your screen. Okay. Your co-host. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Appreciate that. So again, good morning
to everybody here. Um you've all you know Pette. My name is Anthony Karion. I'm a community coordinator with the Civic Engagement Commission. Uh we have a quick presentation for you all today. Um, we're going to be talking about the people's money and ways for your school
to get involved to do a vote session now between May 14th and June 25th. So, pull that up here. Okay. Can everybody see my screen here? Okay. Okay, I'm getting nods of
heads. Thank you. So, let's begin uh slideshow. So, Pette will take it from here and then I'll close us out.
Thank you for that, Anthony. So, um if you haven't heard of us before, we are the New York City Civic Engagement Commission. We were established by popular vote through a November 2018 ballot initiative that revised the New York City charter, our city's constitution, and we're the first
commission created by New York City voters to restore civic trust and strengthen democracy by promoting inclusive participation. And during these uncertain times, you can imagine what kind of challenge that is right now. But we are in a space with parent
leaders. And I've always said that if you want a solution, go to a parent because we're solution-based people. Um, so this was actually created to address the uh the decrease in uh participatory democracy in our New York City
residents. And um you know uh if there was ever a time to restore civic trust, it is now. Next slide, Anthony. Um so we're going to talk a little bit about participatory budget and what the people's money campaign is. So participatory budgeting or PB as we
all like to say is a democratic process in which community members decide how to spend part of the public budget. The people's money is the New York City's first citywide PB process in which all New York City residents um ages 11 years
or older decide how to spend a portion of the city's budget. And in this case it's $4 million. Next slide. So um in terms of project allocations that have been awarded uh through the balloting process and through the vote
process um we have uh the five burrows all presented here. Each bureau will be funding a project um there there's 10 projects on the ballot for the uh bureau of the Bronx. It'll be five projects that that will be funded at $200,000
each from the 10 projects on the ballot. For Brooklyn, it's allocated um 10 uh projects. Five will be selected funded at $235 each. Uh for Manhattan, 10 projects on the ballot. Four will be selected funded at
$165,000. Queens, 10 10 ideas on the ballot. Five will be selected at 195,000 per project. And then for Staten Island, there will be six projects on their ballot. One will be selected and funded at
$190,000 totaling $4 million um funding 20 projects uh to be implemented the following year. Next slide. So how to get your school involved? So when it comes to school
participation, we need you. We know that our parent leaders are the beacon of information. They are the um they are the ones who get all the information out. They are pretty much the pivotal point of awareness and they are the lynch pin that connects the school
community um to the school leadership. So when it comes to school participation, we can go to principles, we can go to parent coordinators, but we need you. We need our parent leaders to be um raising the flag about why it's important for New Yorkers to have a say
about how we spend our budget. So, how do we do that? The the CEC or Civic Engagement Commission wants to get as many New York City public schools to conduct vote sessions in their classrooms. Um, why? Because the people's money is a great way for youth as young as 11 years to be civically
engaged and to have a say in how millions of dollars are spent in New York City regardless of immigration status. And many of the projects on the ballot are focused on youth and will be directly impacting their lives. Um almost every cycle that we have done the
idea generation sessions there have always been requests for afterchool programs. There have been requests for intergenerational programs for job development for young adults um creating employment pathways um life skills uh support for young parents. So, it's it's
a very youth and familydriven um process and it's no wonder that families who actually come up with these ideas um are seeing a lack of them in their particular neighborhoods. So, this is why we so appreciate having um a platform like today where we can speak
to parent leaders across the entire city and ask you to mobilize and advocate to have vote sessions either in the classroom or to have them during your PTA meetings or your your community meetings. Um I'm going to throw it over to Anthony to talk about uh the vote
period and different ways that we can get involved. Yeah, thank you Paul. Um just want to just reiterate what what you said about getting the schools involved in the centrality of the parents. Um so we're asking the main ask we're we're here today um is to request
if you would like your school to participate you can host a vote session uh anytime between May 14th through June 25th which is the voting period. Um, like Pette mentioned, any New Yorker 11 or older will be allowed to participate
and cast their ballot regardless of citizen uh, citizenship status. Um, how does it work? So, there's two main ways. Um, we have two ways to facilitate this vote session. What it entails is a brief Yes. Yeah. Sorry to interrupt. Yeah,
thank you. I'm sorry to interrupt. Uh, as we stated earlier, once the chancellor is here, we'll have a little pause to have give her her time cuz Thank you. Thank you, Rosa. Of course. Thank you, sir. Let me stop sharing
them. Thank you. Thank you, Chancellor Melissa. The floor is all yours. Hi, everyone. Um, I apologize, but I am traveling. Um, and the reception is really poor, so I'm going to keep my camera off, but of course, I am here with you. Um, just super excited
to hear from all of you, and we have the team here to answer any and all questions. So, great to see you all and looking forward to hearing from you. Randy, good morning, Chancellor. Um so we have some questions that were submitted in
advance. Um the first question is regarding Governor Hokll's bell-to-bell announcement. Will New York City public schools implement a citywide policy on inschool smartphone use or will the school leadership teams be empowered to decide on device storage and usage
protocols at the individual school level starting this September? That's a really great question. Um, we are still unpacking the mandate, but I've been very vocal that I think there's power in schools um, designing what works best for them. We want to be
supportive of that and we want to really understand um, the mandate that's coming from the state as well. But to the extent that it's possible for schools to work with their own SLTs to really design um, their own policy that works best for them, we will be supportive of
that. Um, obviously this is all very new and so more to come on it, but that's always um that's always the way that I lead. Schools know what's best for them. in the rare cases where schools don't know what's best for them and they're struggling, then obviously we'd be on
hand to support. Um, but as we learn more about this process, we will continue to engage this group um and make sure that we're empowering um schools and and and the individual geographic districts to support with it.
Great. Thank you so much. Um the next question is um composting is now the law in New York City. Will New York City public schools do composting? Thank you. And Emma, I know you are on uh the call, so if you or your team
could provide some details on this. Of course. Thank you for Thank you for that question, Randy. Um, composting is the law in New York City, but New York City public schools got a little bit ahead of the city in terms of our composting citywide thanks to some amazing work from various people on this
call, including um Meredith, who I believe you guys heard from earlier today. um our chief sustainability officer. So Meredith, you want to give an update there? I will happily give an update there. Um I mentioned this a little bit on my presentation earlier, but happy to
report that as of last spring 2024, um all New York City public schools currently receive curbside composting services. Uh they were provided with the equipment necessary as well as training both before implementation, but also um on an ongoing basis. everything from
operational to support to uh educational support. We also have uh one of our climate action days uh that was mentioned earlier. Uh we have a theme for waste specifically just waste reduction, waste diversion, uh composting just to kind of raise
awareness uh and galvanize both compliance uh and participation. And I would just add to that, for whatever it's worth, having been taught by many of the green teams at many of our schools about the composting rules, I can validate the learning that has
gone on there. They're they're very good at teaching and sorting and it's it's great to see. Always room to improve, but like really actually very proud of the work this team did to move that forward even as the city delayed its own roll out. Okay. Um, the comprollers's office did
an audit report on April 9th, 2025 on the New York City Department of Education school construction authorities asbestous management program. What is the current plan to be in compliance and protect our children specifically for the most vulnerable who suffer from many health complications
and miss school affecting their attendance? Absolutely. And um, you know, we have been working really closely um with SCA. So, I want to pass it over to Dan because I think the first the first thing we want to double down on in our
messaging is that our children are safe. Um, Dan, you work closely with SDA, so if you can provide some more detailed updates. Yes, Chancellor, excuse me. Um, I'll start and then Emma can jump in. But,
um, that is right. We are um the the main thing to know is that in any situation where there is construction going on we are following every protocol to ensure that there is
no exposure to asbestous and that's when the real danger happens. Uh it is when walls are exposed, pipes are exposed etc. And if there is as best is present, it can get into the air and that's quite dangerous. And so we file we we follow
SEA follows DSF follows very stringent protocols uh when it comes to any construction work happening in a school or outside of a school to ensure there's absolutely no asbestous danger. We also do uh a testing program beyond that so
we we uh know where the asbestous is. Um there's there's some additional compliance burdens that we're working out as well, but um want to make sure on this one that that folks know. Um there is absolutely no gaps here when it comes to
any potential for exposure whether it's staff, students, families, anybody in a school. There's no potential because in those situations when uh there's a risk, we follow follow very stringent protocols. But Emma, is is there anything you wanted to add to to that?
I'll add one thing and then I'll toss to Kevin to talk about the work we're doing to um improve some of the reporting protocols, which was a piece of the controller report. I just want to make clear that what Dan just said is a true and and isn't inconsistent with what the controller said. Like there's all broad agreement that when there's work going
on in our schools, we and SCA do all the things. Reoccupancy letters at every stage, making sure kids can go back and be safe. Um that being said, Kevin, you want to talk about some of the direct follow-ups on the Hera reporting which was the the very targeted piece the report was on? Absolutely. Uh thank you
Emma, Dan, and Chancellor. Uh and good morning uh to the committee. Uh thanks for having me here today. Um like to start by saying we we thank the controller uh for his thoughtful audit. Um and we agree with all eight recommendations. Um there is work for us to do about how we are transparent, more
transparent, and ultimately communicate with families. So um we can make those recommendations available to you in this chat. We could drop them in. You could see um but I think the point here for us is to give you a little bit update of what we're doing. Um the controller, I just want to also say that that he recommends the the the administration
take swift action here. Uh and we also agree with that. Uh we are going to move very quickly. Um, and there's also some data issues that they were concerned about about nonACM letters. Want to make sure that the buildings that have no AC asbestous containing material does indeed show up and is apparent. So what
are we doing? The first thing is we're going to digitize every AHA management book. That is the book that holds all the asbestous containing information of a building, tests, work, uh, any any bit of work that happens in that building. Those are now scanned and available to
the public. So you can go to a school's page. getting through the burrows as fast as we can. We've already knocked out Brooklyn and Staten Island, so we're going to move pretty quickly. Uh, but we began in earnest in in digitizing our records. Uh, so that families and the broader public could see. Uh, and that's important to me, just not as as as
someone here who works at Tweed, but you know, my three kids all went to PS8, my three kids went to IS-24, my wife teaches at IS-75. The average age of our buildings are 50. And I could tell you, um, I understand even the building I taught in was was built in 1962. So these are very real to me as an individual, not just as somebody who
represents uh our operations team. Um so now that that's transparent and getting those out there, the next thing was when we did periodic surveillance, our custodians are required to check our school buildings twice a year um to see if there's any damage to asbesus containing material, any any areas of
concern that wasn't documented well. Um and so we ended up creating a tool online tool with our DIT team that captures that that's already in publication that's actually being done. uh Serita Tuma who you heard from before already did the training. Um our dates are even populating now. So you can go to your school's web page and see if
it's up for your school. So we've already done their surveillance walkthroughs. Uh brings us to the trienials. Um there's a bit of an undertaking. I want to say this administration was extremely supportive. Um and we do have the $80 million needed to start testing the program to test those 900 buildings that the the
controller noted. We'll do that trianal every 3 years and then revisit that. Uh, but we're going to put an RFB out to make sure we have enough companies to come test. Now, a reason why and and and Dan alluded to this, we always test before we do the work. We always monitor testing during the work and then we
retest for reoccupancy when the work is completed. The trienal is meant to put benchmarks along the way that they were tested every three years, but in addition to always test, test monitor and retest for occupancy. So, there is no gap to Dan's point uh about that. So
once we post the RFB for the testing, we're going to begin in earnest in July. Um we're actually hiring a new director of health and safety. We're really excited about that and hiring in each burrow. So there'll be a content expert in every burrow to make sure the training is happening locally. Um and
that the custodians hear directly and regularly uh from the content experts. So we're super excited about the progress. I do want to thank the controller. If there is a family, a a a staff member um who needs support, I have no problem anybody on this committee calling me directly. Um I
think most of you have my cell phone. Um if you don't, Randy, if you could pass it along. Our IG team is there to talk to any elected officials that have questions. Um and ultimately our press team is to work with any press questions. But I will say fundamentally the any issue you may hear now is likely
brought out of a lack of a good communications path. So, we're trying to make sure that when we do work, it's just not a letter that is static. Um, we want to make sure that people are aware, have the the schedule of the construction, what's to be expected, and what tests follow that. So, there's an assurance, just not our word and our say
so that it is safe. Indeed, we will produce a documentation that will all again be digitized and up on the website uh for public uh review. Um, with that, I think um that's kind of where we're at. Uh the the just so you know, Randy, if anybody has questions on the recommendations, there were eight of
them. We agree with everyone. So again, I'll close by thanking the chanc I mean the controller. Uh we're we're working in earnest to knock these out uh one at a time. So thank you. Thank you. Um last question for the chancellor is can we know about your
vision of family connectors? What do you expect to change in the schools and districts? I'm really excited about the family connectors. Um, and so for me, the vision behind this, um, and and of
course, I want to thank the team because they helped establish this vision with me. So it it really is a shared vision um is empowering parents to really truly understand the resources that are available to them in New York City and
to through sharing information with them that it's a step in the direction of helping parents to develop themselves as advocates not only for themselves and their own children but for their um their peers and other children in the
community. So, you know, we started with with with the initial plan with the agencies, but then thinking about how we can go further with this um and add training modules down the line. Um this was really born out of the work that started with Dr. Melendez and the
literacy ambassadors. Um and so we just know that when parents are trained and supported and trusted um as partners that they not only advocate for themselves and their own children but for the
larger communities. Um and there's no reason for us to have parents as an afterthought. We shouldn't be telling parents what we're doing. We shouldn't be telling parents um how we're navigating um issues on behalf of their children. um they should have
information available to them um and sit at that decision-making table with us and then become advocates for the larger community. So um I hope this is a step in the right direction. this is what it was intended to be. Not only to get people the information they need so that
way um families feel safe and supported across the city and we can get children back into the buildings because they're not facing issues like housing and food insecurity, but also to um make good on our promise to um help parents become
advocates, especially since so many of them um are already attempting to do that work on on their own. Thank you, Chancellor. Um, they actually there was a meeting yesterday, a webinar yesterday, and they had ACS on to present. And it was it was truly amazing
because like I ask people, you know, what's the first thing you think of when you hear ACS and everyone's initial reaction is they're coming to remove my children. And that's that's what we have to change because they have resources to
prevent that from happening to support you to make sure that that's not, you know, going to be an issue and you can care for your kids and and do the work that you need to do. And some parents just don't know how. And ACS can actually provide the resources and tools that you need. So yesterday's
presentation was amazing. I'm looking forward to today's we're all not making the 12 o'clock, but I hope everybody will be at the six o'clock. I really appreciate hearing that and and that's a perfect example, right? Like there are parents who still see New York City public
schools, ACS, and other agencies is kind of the boogeyman and we want to we want to set the record straight. We want to talk about what resources exist, but it's it's not always helpful if it's
just us communicating to parents, parents talking to other parents. uh the same and the the more the other obvious piece of it is that parents want to be advocates and they want to be empowered to do this kind of work. Now, one of the
things I want to just take a moment to um clarify, this is not in any means meant to replace the existing offices um I'm sorry, the existing positions and work that parent leaders do in other spaces. So, this doesn't replace CPAC.
This doesn't replace SLT uh members or DT or CEC. In fact, anyone who is participating in any of those um forms of parent leadership are more than welcome to become family connectors and we would hope that for that. But what
this simply does is just train people on the information that's available. And many of you already do work like this in your roles. But the reality is that you're not specifically charged with doing that work on an SLT or a DLT or
Ron CPAC. Those are things that you do um on your own and because you're knowledgeable and because you're you're happy to do them for you're happy to do them. But we're trying to build an added layer of an army, if you will, of parent
leaders who are not even necessarily sitting in those um those positions who just want to volunteer their time to to advocate for other families and to spread um you know, the resources and the information that they have. So, it's it's really just trying to enhance
parent engagement and empowerment, but certainly not take away from the work that's already happening in the other um parent leadership roles. Right. Exactly. And and we feel that as parent leaders just being connected. I wrote it in the chat. I don't know if you can see the chat, but it is it's
even more empowering for us because we're already doing that work and giving us this direct connection to these city agencies. It's just more empowering that we can support families even better and make them aware of services that are around the city that we weren't aware of
as parent leaders. So, it's it's great. So, we I I love it. I think we all love it. Awesome. Really glad to hear. Thank you um for participating in it. Yeah. Thank you uh so much. And I know
um I know I am uh part of the ACS community framework. So I I am directly uh connected with them because I am part of the partnerships. I I don't know if anyone knows what is a partnership. Uh
they're in every single borrow and those are the hubs that families can go to if they have any um resource that they need from like clothing, food resource, education, financial support, legal
support. So ACS does have a lot of um information and I'm more than welcome if anyone wants to provide that information to everyone. and they have uh been there for many many years. So I we were one of
the first people that like family connectors what is that you know what I mean because like we already are parent leaders in our schools in our districts like we wanted to know more in depth of what is this you know what I mean are you but now that you have explained it
in in deep details it's we more um empowering that not just one person knows it but a lot of more people are knowledgeable on how to share these resources. Um, so I am I am actually thankful for that. Um, and also for uh
with regards to the SEA, right, there's a lot of questions that we still have. Uh, and one of the questions for me at least, it would be like how long does the materials uh for the construction in a specific school can be outside just standing in
there? You know, is it a year? Is it two years? Is it three years? Cuz you know like now it's getting wet, now it has snow, now it has dust, you know, like how long does it have to stay? And I know that we spoken at CPAC executive
board to even have you for June. I'm just plugging it in because we have tons of questions and I think we need uh more in depth when it comes to like we need more time with you. We need to like know more how to support our our districts
and our borrows. We are citywide like all of us represents a borrow basically. So um do you mind answering that question if possible? So before we go to Kevin, I just want to understand the latter part of it. You
said you need more time. Do you mean more time specifically for a briefing on this topic or are you saying that there are other issues that you feel are not being addressed in the time that we have carved out? I just don't want to conflate two issues. No, no, no. I'm sorry. Maybe I should have been more
specific. Yes. Thank you for um the family connectors, but I know that we are planning a um a school construction authority presentation for next month. That's what I meant to say. Yep. Okay. Uh Kevin or Emma?
Yeah, I I think the specific question was on on uh expediting projects and any material that's outside. I can assure you any material that's left outside is typically the material you'll see is is when we're doing exterior modernization, which are roofs, parapits, windows, those are weather tolerant. Um any any
equipment that or or material needs to be uh safeguarded. Your point is well taken. Uh, I can assure you that's happening. But if you have instances of materials that are not weather resilient that are outside outside of bricks and and and roofing and tar materials, things like that, you could always send our way. We'll check up with the SCA.
Thanks. And President Diaz, I would just say feel free before that briefing with SCA if you circulate the the questions that you know you need answers to, uh, we'll work with SCA to make sure they're prepared to to address them headon. So,
so feel free to send that to me or to Emma or Kevin uh if you if you have questions beforehand and we'll we'll uh work with SCA to make sure they're as prepared as as uh they possibly can be. Absolutely.
uh we are going to have probably send out to everyone like a Google uh form so everyone can gather all the information specifically to their district so we can you know go live and say okay this is
happening this will happen when is expected to finish so we can um all be on the same page because as as I have questions I'm sure everyone has questions and the ones that are uh watching us on YouTube live also have
questions. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Uh thank you so much, Chancellor Melissa. It's always a pleasure uh to have you here as every single month uh your commitment to parent engagement is
real. Thank you. Thank you so much. Great to see you all. Talk soon. Thank you. Be well everybody. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. And we want to pause and go to continue
with a presentation from CEC. Oh, okay. Now we're resuming. Kept everybody in suspense. Um, let me share my screen one more time. I think I was at the point of saying exactly how you can get
involved. So, let me pull up my screen one more time. Okay, on slideshow, just double back very quickly. So, in terms of scheduling a vote session, it can occur any time during this 6 week vote period, May 14th
through June 25th. Um, and there's two ways we can conduct the the facilitation of your vote session. So, we have limited availability, but if you would like a CEC representative uh to come to your school to conduct a presentation about the people's money, the community
projects on the burough ballot and then following that brief presentation would be a digital uh online voting um session. Um I explained that more. Um your school would be given uh pin code tickets. Um each student would receive pin codes to bypass the online portal
which asks um for a phone number and once they bypass that they could vote online for the community projects using.nyc.gov/pb our website. Um and for that they would need access to you know a device and the internet. Um so if you
would like to request a community facilitator we'd be happy to provide one. again limited availability and also your own school personnel. So if um you have a point of contact who fills out the school interest form and again we could provide instruction and training
on the presentation the community projects on your ballot and then would provide the pin codes that your students would use uh to vote with and we would send that via PDF via email. um quickly about the vote session
format. I mentioned it uh just briefly. It's it's around 30 minutes, shouldn't take more than that. Again, it's just a quick slideshow presentation. There's a short video about the people's money, the four phases of it. There's an introduction to the community projects. And as you saw from Pette's review of
the chart, it differs burrow to burrow. Staten Island has less projects. One will be funded. um Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx have and Manhattan have 10 projects. All the community projects differ. And then the
last part of this two-part uh vote session is of course the digital voting itself. And the students, like I mentioned earlier, will use a pin code to vote um online and select their favorite projects. Um and it's pretty simple. Um,
if you would like to sign up your school, I'll also put the the interest form in the chat if you want to click on the link. But if you want to just take your phone, scan the QR code, um, and you could sign up your school. Once you do that, um, uh, CEC representative,
myself, Pette, will, um, reach out to you, schedule a check-in meeting to discuss, um, possible dates, whether you would like to request a community facilitator, and just your capacity for, um, you know, having your students access technology on the day of the the
vote session. Um, we're also going to offer office hours throughout the vote period. So, we'll make ourselves available for any questions or concerns you might have um when conducting the vote session. And that's a very quick summary. I'm going to
leave well I'll return to this maybe a little later, but I'm going to put the link in the chat and then going to stop sharing my screen to see if anybody has any questions. Okay, we have uh one minute for questions. Does anyone have any
questions? Please raise your hand. Okay, we'll send the slides over and also the information on how to um reach them and have this presentation in all your schools and districts. Um okay, thank you so much
guys for uh joining today. And please send me the slides because my um email not working. No problem. Thank you so much for uh send putting it in the chat. I'm going to uh grab it and also um send it to
everyone. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you, Rosa. And thank you everybody for the time. Have a great meeting guys. See you all soon. Bye. Okay, one second. Oh god, she brought me back.
Apologies. Okay. So, our next point of discussion, if I can just put this somewhere that doesn't interfere. There we go. Okay. I just wanted to update everyone because I receive a lot of phone calls and texts
like what's going on with this standing committees? Are they happening? Are they not happening? So, I know I confirm with the emails that I've received and thank you to Rande for pointing it out. Um, a couple of these committee meetings did
meet. I wanted to let everyone know for transparency. The capacity building and support uh meets quarterly and they met on April 3rd. I know the uh communications uh they meet it meets quarterly and also they met on April
3rd. The high school met on May 5th. I was also in attendance. The legislative met is meeting quarterly. I actually do not know um when he met last or when they will meet. I will find that
information. I know the multilanguage learners they met on April 3rd and the special education has been inactive. I will appoint a person for that um committee because we need to reactivate
especially with the special education. That's a very sensitive committee and we want more parents uh involved. I know I've received a lot of emails um with uh CPAC members being uh interested in
sharing this meeting. Please be on the lookout for an email from me. uh the wellness and health and safety. I am not sure. I was told that they met. I don't have any information. We will find that out. And the alumni last time that they
met was January 7th. So that's another um committee that needs to be reactivated. Um and we'll get back to you when it comes to that. I know as per our um as per our bylaws and you can
also uh check your emails because I include the bylaws every single month when necessary and this is very necessary the chair of CPAC myself will appoint a chair to a committee because a couple of these are not uh active. I
know it's sometimes a lot, but we need more parent engagement, especially for uh CPAC current members. And our next meeting is June 12th and our um executive board meeting
is June 2nd. And also wanted to acknowledge uh that this month is the Asian-American and Pacific Icelandic Heritage Month. the Jewish American Heritage Month, mental health awareness month. Believe
me, I I'm going to say I I am there are a lot of pressure in getting so many things done and because we hold a lot of roles in New York City public school. It's a lot, but know that you have uh an executive board that you have all the
parent leaders that are able to support you. uh women's health month. Uh and to all teachers, everyone, we thank you so much for everything that you do for our children. You're truly um amazing and thank you so much for your patience with
our children and also to all our mommies who are parenting leaders of CPAC, of President's Council, CEC, uh SLT, Title One, PA, PTA. Thank you so much. sincerely and from the bottom of
our hearts, we truly appreciate your dedication to our children's and family and being uh solution makers. We really really appreciate it. And if you this I believe I skipped this last month. Um wanted to point it
out if you scan the QR and also it's going it was already sent out but I'm going to uh send it out again. This QR will bring you to a lot of resources that currently are on the website.
Sometimes it's not right there in one tab, but know that there's a lot of information as to when the meetings uh should be happening. How many how how many days does the meeting need to be sent out? a sample of the PAPA bylaws,
uh, President's Council bylaws, and how the president's council are autonomous and how they're supposed to be working together with their superintendent, and how the superintendent are required to meet quarterly with the president's council. So, please, all of these are
already in the chancellor's regulations. So please, please, please, again, I created this beautiful QR QR code that you're able to just scan. It will bring you directly to the chancellor's
regulations. And with that, again, want to remind everyone of of the work that we do for our children and who we are as every single month, the chancellor's parent advisory council. We are comprised of the presidents or the
signes of the presidents uh representing 32 districts five high schools borrows um district 75 who and we are elected by our own constituent to advocate for the
1.1 million New York City public schools students and families and we also work together with the chancellors as you can see and uh bring any concern, any trends, any policy issue.
Um as you can see a parent um we ensure the parents voice are heard every single month and also thank you just want to acknowledge thank you to the chancellor for meeting with us as an executive board to bring concerns
directly to her. Um we want to let you know that we're an email away, a phone call away. Please let us know how can we best support you. And we're always striving uh for excellence, equity, and
opportunity for all. And with that, I would like to call this meeting to ajourn. And also to thank you so much for everything that you do every single day, every single time for our parents.
I know I I specifically keep on learning on everything that needs to be done and I want to thank everyone for your patience. There we go. So with that, does anyone have any
questions? Otherwise, we will adjourn the meeting. Okay, no questions. Okay, so thank you so much and the meeting is adjourned at 1211 p.m. Just give me one second.